Book Review: The Icarus Hunt by Timothy Zahn

(A note before you read this:  Do NOT go read the Wikipedia page on The Icarus Hunt unless you want to see spoilers.)

The Icarus Hunt by Timothy Zahn is one of my husband's favorite books.  Despite being married to him for over seven years now, I haven't read it.

Until now.

Truthfully, and I'm not just saying this to preserve my marriage, I quite enjoyed the book.

It follows the story of Jordan McKell, who is a smuggler that is hired to pilot the spaceship Icarus and its cargo to Earth.  Obviously, things go wrong -- there is sabotage, bribery, lies heaped upon lies, and all of this only topped by the fact that the ship is pursued by aliens, governments, and various ne'er-do-wells.

The story has elements similar to some of my favorite TV shows and movies; like Whedon's Firefly, it focuses on a smuggler and his crew of misfits, who'd all rather be doing something else.  Everyone being is after McKell and the ship, both governments and criminals alike, which dominates some of the storylines in Firefly.  The book also made me think of The Fifth Element, because the world setting feels very similar, in it's grittiness and treatment of technology.

What is funny about the things that the book reminds of, is that The Fifth Element was released in 1997, and Firefly was aired starting in 2002.  The Icarus Hunt was published right in the middle of that, in 1999.  So maybe it was just a time of good sci-fi.

(Also, all of those years make me feel terribly old.)

One aspect of the book that I like, is that Zahn doesn't mess around with technical explanations of the science in this science fiction work.  There's hyperspace, plasma guns, aliens doing alien things... and it's all stated as facts and left at that, basically.  I'm fine with this.  I've read other sci-fi books where the technology is described and explained in far too much detail, creating unnecessary lulls in the story.  Yes, sometimes the academic explanation of things is interesting, but my experience is that, most of the time, it really isn't.

Overall, The Icarus Hunt is a good romp.  The pacing is very good, the mystery is interesting, there's no weird forced romance or anything, just action and adventure.  Go read it.

What-What?! Week of August 3rd

This week has been... well, a week.  Last weekend, I worked as a housekeeper in a local hotel.  I spent Saturday getting everything that I did redone in a slightly different way.  Sunday was much better, though, so there's the learning curve.  Sunday, I made up somewhere in the neighborhood of 120 beds, and probably 200 beds for the entire weekend.

Odd Jobs

This week's odd job is a shop assistant to help care for a bunch of WWII DUKWs (more commonly called "Ducks"), for a tour company.

 

News:  Cast of Firefly Reunite for Firefly: Online Game via PC World

I'm going to be a bit fangirl-ish for a minute, though maybe it's too late for warnings, considering that I named my daughter after a Firefly character.

At the San Diego Comic Con this past weekend, Quantum Mechanix and Spark Plug Games announced that they've gotten the entire original cast of the show to provide voicework for the upcoming Firefly Online game.  So excited.

Of course, the game itself might still be awful, but this is a great ray of hope for it.  The game is going to involve picking out a crew, and finding and completing jobs.  This part sounds very similar to MechWarrior 2: Mercenaries, which was one of my favorite games growing up.

The game is due out in Spring 2015.  If I have money, I am totally buying it.

What-What?! Week of July 28th

This week, my eldest ruined my couch.  Then my youngest threw himself off of it.  We no longer have a couch, and I'm not sure what we'll replace it with.  Possibly floor cushions, or bean bag chairs.  Maybe we'll make the living room into a giant ball pit?  It'd keep the kids busy, that's for sure.

News: Firefly Videogame Announced via Kotaku
I like Firefly.  I named one of my children after a character from it, I have a rare piece of paraphernalia from the original fan ‘site (that Nathan Fillion frequented, oh yeah!), and so on.  However, the headline that most summed up my feelings about this game was: “Firefly is Getting a Video Game, But Not the One You Want”.  This will be a multi-player online social game specifically for cell phones and tablets.  The setting of Firefly would make a wonderful action roleplaying game, a first-person shooter, even a card game, but not this.  While there is the possibility of this social MMO being good, it’s pretty slim – Fox never understood Firefly before, and it doesn’t look like that’s changed much.

Product Review: Chex Vanilla
My family eats a lot of cereal, and that’s actually one reason that we tend to eat new cereals as soon as they come out – through coupons and sales, these new varieties are usually what I can get the cheapest.  This past week, I bought a few boxes of General Mills’ Chex Vanilla, because the other specialty varieties of Chex we’ve tried (Apple Cinnamon, Honey Nut) have both been pretty good.  The first bowl of this Vanilla variety I had blew me away.  It is so sweet.  Looking at the nutrition label, this is what I found: 8 grams of sugar for a 30 gram serving.  Cheerios have 1 gram of sugar for about the same serving size.  Eating this dry is like eating “puppy chow” – you know, during the holidays when you douse cereal with chocolate and powdered sugar.  It’s not bad if you consider it as an indulgent snack, rather than a breakfast food.  However, the vanilla flavor is sadly lacking, so mostly it just winds up being sweet.  Overall, I think General Mills had a miss with this one.

Review:  Captain Bogg and Salty’s Emphatical Piratical via Amazon
Emphatical Piratical is Captain Bogg and Salty’s most recent album, self-published in 2009.  Unfortunately, there is little on the internet available for this band, so I actually had to buy the album (spend money, what-what?!).  The husband and I really liked this album, and my children very much liked it as well, though I will say that I probably wouldn’t have bought it if I’d heard it first.  It is kind of odd, but entertaining, mildly historical, and a good, fun romp.

Luckily, I was able to find the song Emphatical Piratical on YouTube, though without a video:

At this point, I would like to point out the word “paralogical”, which means:

Paralogical:  Of or relating to a form of reasoning that does not conform to the rules of logic.

I think that this term is itching for a comeback in modern use.  I hereby pledge to use it more often in my everyday speech.

The other song I found on YouTube is from their 2005 album, Pegleg Tango, titled “Pieces of 8ight” – my kids especially liked this video.

If you imagine a hybrid of these two styles, that’s about what the rest of the album sounds like.

Portland’s Pirate Festival
In researching Captain Bogg and Salty, I stumbled upon Portland’s Pirate Festival.  Most years, it is a fine festival full of music, and so on.  However, this year the event has been canceled, due to a member of the crew passing away, and the group’s replica pirate tall ship (the Royaliste) having had been almost completely destroyed by the Portland Sternwheeler (though these events were not inter-related).  The group has my sincerest condolences, and I hope they are able to repair their ship.  They are planning on having the event next year, which I would love to attend, though that will have to wait until the children are older.

Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to work on my scone recipe (kept forgetting to buy flour), but hopefully I’ll be able to work on it this coming week.